OMG! This blog is still working! Has it really been over six years since I've posted here? Something about tempus fugit as I recall from Latin 1 class! Or was it Latin 2?
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Monday, January 21, 2013
I know it's been forever since I've posted. But with the upcoming Super Bowl match-up, I thought I'd share this strange vision that came to me in a dream last night after the two conference championship games were done:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and
weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of Fantasy Football Lore,,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some fellow Niner Fan,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
Over many a quaint and curious volume of Fantasy Football Lore,,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some fellow Niner Fan,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and
flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven from the Chesapeake River Shore.
Not the least obeisance made he; in his old Ray Lewis jersey;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon my E-bay bust of the running back Frank Gore -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
In there stepped a stately raven from the Chesapeake River Shore.
Not the least obeisance made he; in his old Ray Lewis jersey;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon my E-bay bust of the running back Frank Gore -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, tell me ghastly grim and ancient raven
How the outcome will unravel when the two teams meet in battle
In that ancient mausoleum near the wide Mississippi shore
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, tell me ghastly grim and ancient raven
How the outcome will unravel when the two teams meet in battle
In that ancient mausoleum near the wide Mississippi shore
Quoth the raven, “By two scores.”
Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird
or devil!
By the Halls of Holy Canton - by that game we both adore -
Even though the answer kills us, by the sainted name of “Patrick Willis,”
Tell me whether the result will thrill us, here on the broad Pacific’s shore,
Will the trophy of Lombardi go to my lads so hale and hearty in the Red and Gold I adore?
Quoth the raven, `By two scores.'
By the Halls of Holy Canton - by that game we both adore -
Even though the answer kills us, by the sainted name of “Patrick Willis,”
Tell me whether the result will thrill us, here on the broad Pacific’s shore,
Will the trophy of Lombardi go to my lads so hale and hearty in the Red and Gold I adore?
Quoth the raven, `By two scores.'
`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I
shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the foul depths of sooty Baltimore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `By two scores.'
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid Ebay bust of the running back Frank Gore;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Quoth the Raven, “By two scores”
`Get thee back into the tempest and the foul depths of sooty Baltimore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `By two scores.'
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid Ebay bust of the running back Frank Gore;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Quoth the Raven, “By two scores”
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Holiday Gift Ideas
As many of my blog posts tend to be somewhat… ahem… esoteric in their subject matter, I
thought I’d do something a little more helpful for the Holiday
Season. So, with a mere 10 days to go until the big day, here are some (not
quite) last minute suggestions for gift-giving for all those naughty or nice folks on your
shopping lists!
Everybody knows that George Jones has the greatest voice ever given to a male country singer. But who knew he was also a disciple of Jean Paul Sartre? His song, “Choices”, just about says it all in the personal responsibility department. You can hear it here:
http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Live-Alfred-Adam/dp/6301883047/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1323114558&sr=1-2
1. The fictional detective Nero Wolfe came from there.
Now we have something else to truly proud of! It’s the emergence of the stunning new classical guitarist, Milos Karadaglic. He combines incredible technique and talent with some serious “bad boy” good looks. That can be a dangerous combination, integrity-wise, but hopefully he’ll keep playing good music and won’t go all PBS-fund-raising-drive-Andre-Rieu-Yanni on us.
A Horse of A Different
Color – A Play in One (Very Short) Act
Scene 1: San Jose, the present day
Scott: Honey, what are you reading?
For Classical Free Market Economists Who Think They’ve Just About Got It All Figured Out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHi9bCjbu20
For the Existentialist
Who Has Everything
Everybody knows that George Jones has the greatest voice ever given to a male country singer. But who knew he was also a disciple of Jean Paul Sartre? His song, “Choices”, just about says it all in the personal responsibility department. You can hear it here:
You can also buy the album featuring this tune for that hard-drinking-SUV-crashing-
Gospel –shouting-come-to-Jesus-special-someone in your life here:
It also includes the wonderful title track, "Cold Hard Truth," as an extra
bonus!
If the lucky recipient of your Holiday generosity wants
their angst straight from the Parisian source, however, you can give them a DVD of
Godard’s wonderful “Vivre Sa Vie” (“My Life to Life”). It stars the matchless,
magnetic Anna Karina as your typical chain smoking French intellectual hot
chick who spends her days vacillating between turning tricks, dancing in pool
halls, having machine gun battles with pinball playing thugs, and hanging out
with saggy old philosophers talking some heavy, heavy Existential doo-doo!
For a flavor of the film, you can check out her wonderful
“Je suis responsable” speech. Sad to say
for you non-French speakers, I couldn’t find an English subtitled version. But
I did find this one in Spanish which pretty clearly gets the point across:
If that hooked you, you can buy the DVD here:
http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Live-Alfred-Adam/dp/6301883047/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1323114558&sr=1-2
Viva Montenegro
A long, long, long time ago, in a century far away, my grandparents came to the
United States from the tiny Balkan country of Montenegro (population 600,000
which makes it two-thirds the size of San Jose). At the time they left, it was
still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, which is why my Granddad had “Austrian”
as his nationality on his immigration papers. Usually, there isn’t that much
about Montenegro in the daily news or percolating around in world culture. In
fact, all I can remember is:
1. The fictional detective Nero Wolfe came from there.
2.
We almost qualified for the Euro 2012 soccer
tournament only losing out to Czechoslovakia in the final match of qualifying.
(But we did tie England in a match at Wembley Stadium which is quite an
accomplishment for such a tiny land.)
Now we have something else to truly proud of! It’s the emergence of the stunning new classical guitarist, Milos Karadaglic. He combines incredible technique and talent with some serious “bad boy” good looks. That can be a dangerous combination, integrity-wise, but hopefully he’ll keep playing good music and won’t go all PBS-fund-raising-drive-Andre-Rieu-Yanni on us.
You can learn more about Milos in this article:
If that grabs your attention, you can buy his album
here:
Beatrice (reading): Seabiscuit: An American Legend.
Scott: You mean… like about the race horse?
Beatrice (reading): Hmmm…..
Scott: That’s funny. I never knew you were interested in
horse racing.
Beatrice (reading): Hmmm…..
Scene 2: Same setting, several hours later
Scott: You want to go for a walk?
Beatrice (reading): No, I’m reading.
Scott: But it’s a beautiful day.
Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….
Scott: How about a movie?
Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….
Scene 3: Same setting, several hours later
Scott: But you don’t even like sports books!
Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….
Scott: What’s so special about this one?
Beatrice (reading): Hmmm….
Scott: If it’s so great, how can I get a copy?
Beatrice: Easy! Http://www.amazon.com/Seabiscuit-American-Legend-Laura-Hillenbrand/dp/0449005615/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323121715&sr=8-1
Curtain. End of Play.
Just Something
Beautiful
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austrian composer born early
in the 20th century. No less a light than Gustav Mahler himself
pronounced Korngold a “wunderkind” and predicted a glorious future for him. After some initial success, however, Korngold’s
lushly romantic writing fell out of favor with the Viennese classical music
crowd who were eagerly flinging themselves down the rat hole known as atonal
music. So Korngold emigrated to Hollywood where he ended up writing sound
tracks for movies like “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Captain Blood,” and
“The Sea Hawk.” This may have won him several Academy Awards but did nothing
for his… ahem…. critical street cred
amongst the long-haired crowd. And thus he sank into oblivion reserved for most
“movie music” composers.
Recently, however, EWK has been enjoying something of a
Renaissance. It’s been mostly thanks to the efforts of several enlightened performers
who love to do his music and totally leave it all on the concert floor when
they perform it. As an example, check
out Anne Sofie von Otter doing “Marietta’s Song” (“Gluck, das mir Vierlieb”)
from “Die Todt Stadt” (The Dead City). BTW, EWK wrote this little ditty at the
ripe old age of 23. I hate people like that (even though I love their music!):
If you like what you heard here, Anne Sofie has released a
two-CD set of Korngold’s “serious” music. You can find it at:
One thing that haunts me is that Korngold died in North
Hollywood just as I was wandering around there as a tyke. It makes me wonder if
I ever ran into him at the “Dales’ Jr” (our “7-11” back in the day). Maybe I
stood next to him in the checkout line while he was picking up the latest copy
of “The Hollywood Reporter” while I was out buying kilos of root beer popsicles
for my poor drug-addicted stepmom.
For Classical Free Market Economists Who Think They’ve Just About Got It All Figured Out
I recently stumbled on a book at the San Jose library
called, “Debt: The First 5000 Years.” And, no, it isn’t about how long it takes
to pay off your Visa bill making minimum payments. It’s by David Graeber who, according to his Amazon page, is
an American anthropologist and anarchist who currently holds the position of
Reader in Social Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
The book examines how the
concept of debt has evolved and changed as human needs and relations have
themselves evolved and changed. In particular, it applies actual
anthropological data to several “facts” that classical economists routinely
posit about human nature without a shred of evidence to support them (Are you
listening, Adam Smith?) For example, did money and debt evolve from a barter
economy in primitive humans or was it the other way around? Is “enlightened self-interest”
really the driving force behind how we behave? And how much do economic ideas
about debt and collateral and payment obligations feature into our religious
views (which allegedly pre-date our notions of economics.) You may not “buy”
it all, but it’s a fascinating book and sure to spark some interesting
conversations over the egg nog and gingerbread (especially if you bought them
on credit.)
For All Those Blogging
Playwright/Clarinetists on Your List
Well, we wouldn’t want to forget these folks would we? The
poor darlings! All they do is give and give and give! So here’s an ideal
stocking stuffer for them. It’s the new revolutionary clarinet created by the
good folks at Backun Music. It’s designed to solve scads of technical problems
that plague the old style instrument and make even the… err… amateur
clarinetist sound sooooo much better.
You can check it out here:
At a mere $8,000, the Backun B-flat with gold-plated keys is practically a steal! And it's the perfect size for slipping into someone’s stocking by the
old Yule tree!
Well, that brings us to the end of this blog post. I hope I
haven’t been too materialistic here! After
all, it isn’t just about collecting loot, is it? It’s really about the experience, right? Of course it is! And
in that spirit, I’ll leave you with the following clip which just about says it
all when it comes to gift-giving and presents and all that Yuletide jazz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHi9bCjbu20
Ho, ho, ho, everybody! And merry, merry, merry!
Monday, December 5, 2011
Mozart and Self-Deception
Since my last posting on Tolstoy and "War and Peace," I’ve
been thinking a lot about why I’ve always preferred Mozart to Beethoven. This is
especially poignant for me as today (December 5th) is the 220th anniversary of
Wolfgang's death at the age of 35. It reminds me of the old Tom Lehrer
joke, "It's sobering to remember that when Mozart was my age he'd already
been dead two years!"
Anyway, I’m just old enough to remember how Mozart was once dismissed as a pretty but superficial “precursor” to Beethoven’s greatness. Even as a young ‘un, puffing away on my clarinet in Mr. Tucker’s “senior woodwinds” class in high school, that kind of thinking just totally hacked me off!
“Although charming, Mozart’s wind quintet must yield the
palm to the greater depths of Beethoven’s Opus blah-blah-blah.”
“In his string quartets, Mozart begins an exploration of the
genre that will only reach its apotheosis in Beethoven’s late works.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCOZbjePXkI
For example:
A brilliant raconteur A blowhard
Generous and giving Manipulative
A good listener Someone who never shuts up
Progressive in your views A slave to your class interests
Speaking truth to power Someone with tenure
Totally hot and “all that” A candidate for an Oprah makeover
As in:
A powerful playwright Meh - and who's up for
with provocative views Chinese food after the show?
who really stands out
from the crowd!
I like to think of myself as creating something of value. But doesn’t every creative person believe that? When I contrast that with the “90% of everything is crap” rule, I can see a problem. We can’t all be right, can we? So there has to be a lot of self-deception going on here! But who is zooming whom?
Sigh...
Anyway, I’m just old enough to remember how Mozart was once dismissed as a pretty but superficial “precursor” to Beethoven’s greatness. Even as a young ‘un, puffing away on my clarinet in Mr. Tucker’s “senior woodwinds” class in high school, that kind of thinking just totally hacked me off!
As in:
“In his symphonies, Mozart suggests the themes Beethoven
would bring to a more profound culmination in the Eroica.”
Yuck! Gag me with a Sacher Torte!
From the first time I heard Mozart’s music in “Music Appreciation”
class in the 7th grade I was just… well… hooked. I immediately felt a sense of
connection that I had never experienced before. I think that’s why I chose to
play the clarinet in the first place. Some music teachers came into class one
day and said, “Who wants to learn to play something besides the radio?”
(Today I imagine they would day the IPod.) Remembering all the wonderful music that Mozart had written for the clarinet
(the trio, the quintet, the concerto), I shot up my little hand and said, “The
licorice stick for me, please!” And how I wanted to play all of those wonderful
solos he created for the instrument in his operas! It seems that every time
Mozart wants to speak about human longing and desire he gives the music to the
clarinet.
As in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCOZbjePXkI
For those of you who followed the link, there are certainly
more elaborate polished versions of this music on YouTube. But I just had to
include this one for the magical moment that occurs about 25 seconds in. At
least it’s magical for any clarinet player!
Despite the poverty, ugliness and horror that I might be
feeling at any particular moment, Mozart’s music was always for me beauty,
happiness, and the longing for a kind of harmony and sweetness that
transfigures and ennobles our lives. And, tootling away on the half-busted
B-flat clarinet that I got for $5 at the local hock shop, I felt I got at least
a few half steps closer to experiencing that loveliness.
Fortunately, those bad old days of Mozart bashing are
gone! Today Wolfgang is celebrated as
the titanic world-changing genius that he was. And the whole idea that he was
just “leading up” to Ludwig van B has gone into the proverbial wastebasket of
musicology. And if you doubt this just think about how many "Mostly Mozart" festivals there are compared to those that are "Basically Beethoven". Yay!
But do I really understand why I’ve always preferred Mozart?
Or for that matter why I also prefer Virginia Woolf to D.H. Lawrence or Scott
Fitzgerald to Hemingway? So I decided to
take a shower and brood on it – as most of my ideas tend to come in the shower.
Something about great clouds of steam unlocking the otherwise fettered
consciousness!
And it hit me! Perhaps the unifying idea here is the theme
of self-deception. This is something that has always haunted me. The idea that
you think you are one thing, or are coming off as one thing, and in reality you
are being perceived by everyone else in a totally different way.
For example:
You think you are like this… …
but everyone sees you as…
A brilliant raconteur A blowhard
Generous and giving Manipulative
A good listener Someone who never shuts up
Progressive in your views A slave to your class interests
Speaking truth to power Someone with tenure
Totally hot and “all that” A candidate for an Oprah makeover
This kind of self-deception is at the heart of all of
Mozart’s operas. In Beethoven, “people” are who they say they are (tortured,
heroic, Promethean, etc.) In Mozart,
however, there is a constant sense that everyone is ensnared by their own
misconceptions. So the Count who thinks he is a great seducer is really a
buffoon. The servant who thinks he is the cleverest guy in the room is really
being led around by the nose. The
“puppet master” who thinks he is pulling all the strings is really a sterile
and lost old man. And so it goes. Of course, Mozart, being a supremely
enlightened person, invites us to forgive them all through the beauty of his
music. And so we do.
As in:
BTW, check out the comments after the video. They’re kind of
wonderful!
With these thoughts in mind, I’ve been brooding on the
degree of self-deception that marks my own life as a “seducer” of audiences.
As in:
I think I am like this… … but everyone sees me
as…
A powerful playwright Meh - and who's up for
with provocative views Chinese food after the show?
who really stands out
from the crowd!
I like to think of myself as creating something of value. But doesn’t every creative person believe that? When I contrast that with the “90% of everything is crap” rule, I can see a problem. We can’t all be right, can we? So there has to be a lot of self-deception going on here! But who is zooming whom?
Of course, this kind of thinking can lead down a very
Hamlet-like hall of mirrors where you can’t pick up a pen without wondering
about your actual motives. And I’m left with a feeling of envy for the “Beethovens”
of this world – the people who truly feel that what they are doing is important
and meaningful and must be shared with the world. Does it matter if this is
self-deception after all? I mean… gosh…. We don’t even know how many universes
we live in or how many dimensions there are. One two, eleven, a hundred, an
infinite number? So if we can’t even understand where we are how can we know
who or what we are either?
As Yul Brynner used to say in “The King and I,” ‘Tis a
puzzlement!'
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
On (Almost) Finishing War and Peace
This post is dedicated to my friends Theresa and Danielle – for encouraging me to keep writing these little puppies!
My apologies for the long delay since my last blog post! Was it really last April? In the interim, I’ve been to France a couple of times to help out with my French family. I’ve also hiked in the Spanish Pyrenees and discovered that I adore that part of the world. I’ve also tried to keep things going on the theater, instructional design, and house fixer-upper fronts. So I’ve been a busy bee!
In fact, I was just outside admiring our work in getting the first coat of paint down on the beams that adorn the front of our beloved Eichler home. It’s a very light and pleasant green to offset the rich, dark “coffee” brown of the house. We’re debating whether we need a second coat. After having Béatrice fall off the ladder and really hurting her shoulder, and after wrenching my knee and hobbling around like Captain Ahab without his peg leg, I am pretty much in the “It looks good enough to me” camp… but we’ll see….
BTW, we bought ourselves some peace of mind by investing in the most expensive paint we could find. It’s from Sherwin Williams. It’s called “Duration” because it has a lifetime guarantee. Whose life is that anyway? I wonder! Does that mean the paint will be here long after I’ve slipped off this mortal coil? Ugh! Nothing like staring into a can of paint to remind you of your own mortality!
Anyway, another reason why I’ve been grossly arrears in posting is that I have been spending a good deal of my free time reading “War and Peace". I just hit page 1400! Only 44 more to go! Yowza! Technically, I’ve just started Part Two of the Epilogue. So the “finish line” is very much in sight.
Well, it’s such a cliché to say “I’ve read War and Peace.” Like big whoop for me, right? So I’ve been entertaining the thought of stopping right where I am. It’s a little like Tom Courtney at the end of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” I don’t know if you remember that old British black and white flick. A very young Tom plays a kid in a kind of Juvenile Detention center who discovers he has a tremendous talent for running. The creepy warden puts him in a race against the swells at the local academy for rich kids with the promised that if Tom wins he’ll get all sorts of cushy privileges and liberties. Anyway, the race starts and….
Oh, no! Spoiler Alert! Skip the next paragraph (all in italic type) if you want to watch the film…
So young Tom just obliterates the opposition. He gets right to the finish line and there isn’t a competitor in sight. Instead of crossing the line though and claiming his prize, he just stops and stands there. In a kind of, “Screw you and the horse you rode in on” gesture, he stays two feet in front of the Finish Line and waves to the kids who eventually catch up and “win” the race.
If you’re interested, you can get a flavor of the flick here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQJsE4dJmG0
So I’m thinking of doing the same thing with W and P. Why make a fetish about “finishing” something? Can’t I just stand here a few paces from the end and just wave as Tolstoy makes his way to the conclusion? Is it possible? Can anyone “almost” finish War and Peace? Maybe it would be fun to “almost” read a lot of gy-normous classic books. Don Quixote? Middlemarch! Tristram Shandy? Remembrance of Things Past? The Great Gatsby? Oh, wait. That’s a shortie. But, in general, I wonder…
In the meantime, though, here are my thoughts as I stand (near) the Finish Line of Tolstoy’s magnum opus….
First off, what’s the quote from Samuel Johnson about Paradise Lost? “A very great work certainly - but no one has ever wished it any longer.” That’s kind of true here too I’m afraid. There are long stretches where you feel like saying,
“Umm… I believe I’ve read that already… “
“Ehh… I think I got the point here. Can we move on now?”
“Ahh… haven’t we covered that ground before?”
“Urrr… I guess everybody does need an editor after all….”
This is especially true in the last quarter of the novel where Tolstoy seems to forget that he’s writing a piece of fiction at all. Instead, he turns historian and decides to share (and share and share and share) his thoughts on the great struggle between Napoleon’s Grand Army and the Russian people. So why did the French lose the campaign of 1812? Was the battle of Borodino really a Russian victory? Was Napoleon a bit of a poser, wanker, and fraud? Well, old Leo has all the answers for you!
As with many an armchair general, Tolstoy makes his share of good points. He totally debunks the “great man” theory of history (especially when the “great man” in question is French.) He also sees the end results of historical events as the accumulation of many small decisions and actions rather than as the result of one “maestro” of genius waving his baton. In doing so, Tolstoy certainly anticipated many of the trends of modern historical writing. You have to give him his props for that. On the other hand, he seems to believe that, just as the heavens and planets obey the universal laws of physics, gravity, and so forth, so too do historical events correspond to some as yet undefined “laws of history”. Given our current understanding of modern physics, this seems a naïve view born of a mid 19th century feeling that Newton and Darwin had pretty much “explained it all” for us in their domains.
At least, I think that's what Tolstoy is up to. I'm really too tired to know for sure! All in all the last part of the book gives you the feeling that there is an equivalence between reading this novel and being in the French army yourself slogging your way back to Poland from Moscow – freezing your tookus off and wishing desperately for the whole thing to come to an end. Either that or to fall down face first in the snow and just not get up again until some Cossack comes along and turns you into a human shish-ka-bob. And the fact that Tolstoy is totally, absolutely, utterly lacking in any sense of humor whatsoever makes it even more of a "long march" here.
All that being said, there’s still a tremendous power in the book. That’s especially so when Tolstoy focuses on the lives of the individual characters (as opposed to what Napoleon was having for breakfast the morning of the battle of Austerlitz and whether the Russian General staff really knew what they were doing in evacuating Moscow without a fight). That’s the great theme of the novel for me – how we still have to live our individual lives even though we understand we’re in the grip of these tremendous impersonal historical movements which basically treat us like bugs. That’s certainly a theme that resonates with us all now too, isn’t it? We still have to live and endure even though everything around us (our fortunes, our freedom, our retirement savings) looks like they could/will be taken away in an instant.
So I go back and forth between being really gripped by the novel and often being really, really bored and even angry. That’s when continuing with the book really becomes a chore. I have to say that I just can’t learn to love Tolstoy. Deep down, for me, he’s one of those “world embracing enormous geniuses that we must all admire and who totally eclipses everyone else so there.” I sometimes feel that he is a bit of a bully. At times, reading Tolstoy feels like you’re trapped in a cab with a driver who is a brilliant, cranky autodidact. Realizing that you have something to do with being a writer yourself, he decides to bombard you with everything he knows about the role of the Freemasons and the Vatican in controlling the world money supply. And as he continues his tirade, you hear on the radio that the Freeway to your hotel is blocked for miles ahead because of an overturned big rig with chickens running on the road. So there is absolutely no escape.
Help!
Which also makes me think that in the arts there often seems to be s a funny kind of pairing/balance between the “Tolstoys” and the “anti-Tolstoys”; e.g., the “blowhards/bullies” on one side of the equation and the “whisperers/seducers” on the other. For example, consider the following list of matched pairs. If you had to choose, which would you prefer?
Tolstoy vs. Chekhov
Beethoven vs. Mozart
Michelangelo vs. Donatello
Picasso vs. Matisse
Rembrandt vs. Vermeer
Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald
Whitman vs. Dickinson
Milton vs. Donne
D.H. Lawrence vs. Virginia Woolf
As I look this list over, I feel like, “Oh, heck! I respect the people on the left hand side of the equation but I love the people on the right.” What accounts for this difference? Is it because one type kind of grabs you around the throat and says: “I have something terribly important to tell you! Something that will change you utterly! Something that will make you better understand the meaning of life itself”? Meanwhile the second type seems so much more modest, seductive, and insinuating. Like they’re just saying, “I’m working on this little story. It’s kind of interesting. What do you think?”
But I better stop here! This posting is starting to feel as long as W and P itself! Yikes! Oh, well! Maybe everybody does need an editor after all!
My apologies for the long delay since my last blog post! Was it really last April? In the interim, I’ve been to France a couple of times to help out with my French family. I’ve also hiked in the Spanish Pyrenees and discovered that I adore that part of the world. I’ve also tried to keep things going on the theater, instructional design, and house fixer-upper fronts. So I’ve been a busy bee!
In fact, I was just outside admiring our work in getting the first coat of paint down on the beams that adorn the front of our beloved Eichler home. It’s a very light and pleasant green to offset the rich, dark “coffee” brown of the house. We’re debating whether we need a second coat. After having Béatrice fall off the ladder and really hurting her shoulder, and after wrenching my knee and hobbling around like Captain Ahab without his peg leg, I am pretty much in the “It looks good enough to me” camp… but we’ll see….
BTW, we bought ourselves some peace of mind by investing in the most expensive paint we could find. It’s from Sherwin Williams. It’s called “Duration” because it has a lifetime guarantee. Whose life is that anyway? I wonder! Does that mean the paint will be here long after I’ve slipped off this mortal coil? Ugh! Nothing like staring into a can of paint to remind you of your own mortality!
Anyway, another reason why I’ve been grossly arrears in posting is that I have been spending a good deal of my free time reading “War and Peace". I just hit page 1400! Only 44 more to go! Yowza! Technically, I’ve just started Part Two of the Epilogue. So the “finish line” is very much in sight.
Well, it’s such a cliché to say “I’ve read War and Peace.” Like big whoop for me, right? So I’ve been entertaining the thought of stopping right where I am. It’s a little like Tom Courtney at the end of “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” I don’t know if you remember that old British black and white flick. A very young Tom plays a kid in a kind of Juvenile Detention center who discovers he has a tremendous talent for running. The creepy warden puts him in a race against the swells at the local academy for rich kids with the promised that if Tom wins he’ll get all sorts of cushy privileges and liberties. Anyway, the race starts and….
Oh, no! Spoiler Alert! Skip the next paragraph (all in italic type) if you want to watch the film…
So young Tom just obliterates the opposition. He gets right to the finish line and there isn’t a competitor in sight. Instead of crossing the line though and claiming his prize, he just stops and stands there. In a kind of, “Screw you and the horse you rode in on” gesture, he stays two feet in front of the Finish Line and waves to the kids who eventually catch up and “win” the race.
If you’re interested, you can get a flavor of the flick here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQJsE4dJmG0
So I’m thinking of doing the same thing with W and P. Why make a fetish about “finishing” something? Can’t I just stand here a few paces from the end and just wave as Tolstoy makes his way to the conclusion? Is it possible? Can anyone “almost” finish War and Peace? Maybe it would be fun to “almost” read a lot of gy-normous classic books. Don Quixote? Middlemarch! Tristram Shandy? Remembrance of Things Past? The Great Gatsby? Oh, wait. That’s a shortie. But, in general, I wonder…
In the meantime, though, here are my thoughts as I stand (near) the Finish Line of Tolstoy’s magnum opus….
First off, what’s the quote from Samuel Johnson about Paradise Lost? “A very great work certainly - but no one has ever wished it any longer.” That’s kind of true here too I’m afraid. There are long stretches where you feel like saying,
“Umm… I believe I’ve read that already… “
“Ehh… I think I got the point here. Can we move on now?”
“Ahh… haven’t we covered that ground before?”
“Urrr… I guess everybody does need an editor after all….”
This is especially true in the last quarter of the novel where Tolstoy seems to forget that he’s writing a piece of fiction at all. Instead, he turns historian and decides to share (and share and share and share) his thoughts on the great struggle between Napoleon’s Grand Army and the Russian people. So why did the French lose the campaign of 1812? Was the battle of Borodino really a Russian victory? Was Napoleon a bit of a poser, wanker, and fraud? Well, old Leo has all the answers for you!
As with many an armchair general, Tolstoy makes his share of good points. He totally debunks the “great man” theory of history (especially when the “great man” in question is French.) He also sees the end results of historical events as the accumulation of many small decisions and actions rather than as the result of one “maestro” of genius waving his baton. In doing so, Tolstoy certainly anticipated many of the trends of modern historical writing. You have to give him his props for that. On the other hand, he seems to believe that, just as the heavens and planets obey the universal laws of physics, gravity, and so forth, so too do historical events correspond to some as yet undefined “laws of history”. Given our current understanding of modern physics, this seems a naïve view born of a mid 19th century feeling that Newton and Darwin had pretty much “explained it all” for us in their domains.
At least, I think that's what Tolstoy is up to. I'm really too tired to know for sure! All in all the last part of the book gives you the feeling that there is an equivalence between reading this novel and being in the French army yourself slogging your way back to Poland from Moscow – freezing your tookus off and wishing desperately for the whole thing to come to an end. Either that or to fall down face first in the snow and just not get up again until some Cossack comes along and turns you into a human shish-ka-bob. And the fact that Tolstoy is totally, absolutely, utterly lacking in any sense of humor whatsoever makes it even more of a "long march" here.
All that being said, there’s still a tremendous power in the book. That’s especially so when Tolstoy focuses on the lives of the individual characters (as opposed to what Napoleon was having for breakfast the morning of the battle of Austerlitz and whether the Russian General staff really knew what they were doing in evacuating Moscow without a fight). That’s the great theme of the novel for me – how we still have to live our individual lives even though we understand we’re in the grip of these tremendous impersonal historical movements which basically treat us like bugs. That’s certainly a theme that resonates with us all now too, isn’t it? We still have to live and endure even though everything around us (our fortunes, our freedom, our retirement savings) looks like they could/will be taken away in an instant.
So I go back and forth between being really gripped by the novel and often being really, really bored and even angry. That’s when continuing with the book really becomes a chore. I have to say that I just can’t learn to love Tolstoy. Deep down, for me, he’s one of those “world embracing enormous geniuses that we must all admire and who totally eclipses everyone else so there.” I sometimes feel that he is a bit of a bully. At times, reading Tolstoy feels like you’re trapped in a cab with a driver who is a brilliant, cranky autodidact. Realizing that you have something to do with being a writer yourself, he decides to bombard you with everything he knows about the role of the Freemasons and the Vatican in controlling the world money supply. And as he continues his tirade, you hear on the radio that the Freeway to your hotel is blocked for miles ahead because of an overturned big rig with chickens running on the road. So there is absolutely no escape.
Help!
Which also makes me think that in the arts there often seems to be s a funny kind of pairing/balance between the “Tolstoys” and the “anti-Tolstoys”; e.g., the “blowhards/bullies” on one side of the equation and the “whisperers/seducers” on the other. For example, consider the following list of matched pairs. If you had to choose, which would you prefer?
Tolstoy vs. Chekhov
Beethoven vs. Mozart
Michelangelo vs. Donatello
Picasso vs. Matisse
Rembrandt vs. Vermeer
Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald
Whitman vs. Dickinson
Milton vs. Donne
D.H. Lawrence vs. Virginia Woolf
As I look this list over, I feel like, “Oh, heck! I respect the people on the left hand side of the equation but I love the people on the right.” What accounts for this difference? Is it because one type kind of grabs you around the throat and says: “I have something terribly important to tell you! Something that will change you utterly! Something that will make you better understand the meaning of life itself”? Meanwhile the second type seems so much more modest, seductive, and insinuating. Like they’re just saying, “I’m working on this little story. It’s kind of interesting. What do you think?”
But I better stop here! This posting is starting to feel as long as W and P itself! Yikes! Oh, well! Maybe everybody does need an editor after all!
Monday, April 18, 2011
New Year's Blog Resolutions
Happy New Year, everyone! Wait, I know it’s really Tax Day but this is my first posting of 2011. So I’m feeling a little bit of that “the giant, glittering ball is falling in Times Square” vibe. Where’s my party hat and who has the bottle of bubbly? Actually, it’s been so long since my last blog-o-rama that I was beginning to think I’d never post again. Couple of reasons for that:
1. Between 1/1/11 and March 7th, Béatrice was still in France with her folks and I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with bidness work, trying to keep the house nice, feeding the hungry koi fish, and fighting off feelings of personal sadness. So I didn’t feel much energy about blogging (or anything else creative really). There was also a general depression about the shape of our dear old Republic and deep, deep disappointment with the leadership coming out of Washington.
2. Since March 7th, Béatrice has been home! Yay! I’ve been very, very happy. So many things to catch up on and do and share! So, once again, blogging faded into the distance. I have to say the feeling of disappointment with the Democrats is still there too. But when you’re personally feeling happy it does recede into the background a bit. (Except when you have to listen to debates about the critical nature of cutting the deficit in a time when masses of people are still unemployed and desperate).
But it’s a beautiful morning here in San Jose as I write this. I can hear the birds singing outside. (“Les oiseaux sont joyeux” as we used to say back in French 1. And, yes, Mlle. Isner, I still have a crush on you!) I was just taking a shower and thinking about how happy I am now that Béatrice is home. In the middle of all that the idea of writing a blog post popped into my head out of the proverbial nowhere. So there you have it! The blog lamp is lit and I’m going for it! So, in the spirit of renewal and re-birth, I’ve decided to write up some “New Years’ blog Resolutions”!
I resolve to…
Write shorter posts. (I think that’s the equivalent of “losing weight”).
Blog more frequently. (I think that’s like “going to the gym.”)
Be more open and honest and not hide so much behind humor, jokes, and YouTube clips. (I think that’s the equivalent of “not waste so much time on Facebook.”)
Figure out how to make the blog more visually interesting. (I think that’s the equivalent of “learn a foreign language.”)
That’s all that I’ve got for now! Whew! I’m tired! Like someone who has gone to their first personal training session and realized, “I am sooooo out of shape! I really have to cut back on the Doritos!” By way of preview, in my next post I plan to write about a recent performance of one of my one acts down here in San Jose at Arclight Repertory. I think it posed several questions about my ongoing struggle with “seducing the audience”. So stay tuned!
1. Between 1/1/11 and March 7th, Béatrice was still in France with her folks and I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with bidness work, trying to keep the house nice, feeding the hungry koi fish, and fighting off feelings of personal sadness. So I didn’t feel much energy about blogging (or anything else creative really). There was also a general depression about the shape of our dear old Republic and deep, deep disappointment with the leadership coming out of Washington.
2. Since March 7th, Béatrice has been home! Yay! I’ve been very, very happy. So many things to catch up on and do and share! So, once again, blogging faded into the distance. I have to say the feeling of disappointment with the Democrats is still there too. But when you’re personally feeling happy it does recede into the background a bit. (Except when you have to listen to debates about the critical nature of cutting the deficit in a time when masses of people are still unemployed and desperate).
But it’s a beautiful morning here in San Jose as I write this. I can hear the birds singing outside. (“Les oiseaux sont joyeux” as we used to say back in French 1. And, yes, Mlle. Isner, I still have a crush on you!) I was just taking a shower and thinking about how happy I am now that Béatrice is home. In the middle of all that the idea of writing a blog post popped into my head out of the proverbial nowhere. So there you have it! The blog lamp is lit and I’m going for it! So, in the spirit of renewal and re-birth, I’ve decided to write up some “New Years’ blog Resolutions”!
I resolve to…
Write shorter posts. (I think that’s the equivalent of “losing weight”).
Blog more frequently. (I think that’s like “going to the gym.”)
Be more open and honest and not hide so much behind humor, jokes, and YouTube clips. (I think that’s the equivalent of “not waste so much time on Facebook.”)
Figure out how to make the blog more visually interesting. (I think that’s the equivalent of “learn a foreign language.”)
That’s all that I’ve got for now! Whew! I’m tired! Like someone who has gone to their first personal training session and realized, “I am sooooo out of shape! I really have to cut back on the Doritos!” By way of preview, in my next post I plan to write about a recent performance of one of my one acts down here in San Jose at Arclight Repertory. I think it posed several questions about my ongoing struggle with “seducing the audience”. So stay tuned!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Slowing Down
I was at a Chanukah party recently wolfing down the potato latkes and watching the world’s most adorable 4 year old finger painting on her iPad. Taking all this in, I drifted off into a reverie of the future: “When she’s my age she’ll reminisce with her friends about how cute and antique it was that once upon a time you actually had to touch the screen with your finger to do something rather than just think about it via the microchip implanted in your cerebral cortex.”
Anyway, as I was dreaming away, a friend who I hadn’t seen for a while came up and said two things:
1. “Good to see you again!"
2. "Hey, your blog posts are slowing down!”
In response I immediately had two reactions:
1. That sense of surprise I always have when I realize there actually are people out there who might be reading what I’m writing.
2. The realization that he was right. My blog posts are slowing down… which may, ahem, also mean I’m slowing down. Yikes!
So, being a good little analytical Virgo type, I started thinking about why this might be the case. Several theories immediately sprung to mind:
• “Bidness” has been better lately, and thus much more time consuming – for which I am profoundly grateful (as are my creditors!)
• We re-financed on our house (which was only slightly less irksome and all absorbing than asking Comrade Stalin for the required papers to leave Mother Russia at the height of the Great Purge.)
• Beatrice has been in France for the last three months helping her folks – so there’s just been more on my plate in terms of the day-to-day stuff involved in administering our… ahem… “estate”… (I was going to say “dacha” – not that we have one – but just because I kind of like the term…. Very Chekhovian.)
• Our koi pond sprung a leak! And if there’s ever a multi-dimensional challenge, involving digging ditches, employing inductive/deductive and reductive reasoning, as well as engaging in intense sessions of prayer and contemplation, it’s trying to troubleshoot and fix a leaky koi pond!
Before moving on though I’d just like to say how much help I received from our neighbor, Brice Hansen, on fixing the koi pond. He was so incredibly generous with his time and physical labor and troubleshooting smarts. What a guy!
After considerable brooding, I’m now leaning to the conclusion that the real reason for my “slow down” is that I’m simply feeling overwhelmed by things… • There’s also seems to be a “wintry feeling” in my heart which may have something to do with the season, a sense of waiting for Spring perhaps, and an overall malaise about the direction that life and the world is taking.
… which brings me back to my last blog post on John Maynard Keynes…
So perhaps I’ll wind up 2010 with a few last thoughts on why Keynes is such an attractive figure to me now. Largely I think it’s because he realized:
1. That the ultimate purpose of studying economics was to provide as many people as possible with what he called “the good life”; e.g., to live “wisely, agreeably, and well.”
2. How uncertain and crazy the future is and that “markets” are not driven by people who possess perfect information and behave rationally but who are often driven by terror and folly.
3. That a horrible gap exists when “self-correcting markets” are lurching towards some kind of pre-ordained “equilibrium” between supply, demand, and full employment and that during those gaps some rather unpleasant things such as… Well… err… fascism… can occur.
4. That everyone should have a basic understanding of economics just as they should know about all other areas of human discourse (religion, science, the arts, philosophy, morals, etc.)
5. That, as a result, economics should be written as clearly and simply as possible and not hide its insights beneath impenetrable “professional” jargon and a blizzard of mathematics.
6. That we are all victims of the “paradox of thrift”; e.g., we start to cut back on spending and want to hoard our gold in times of economic crisis. Of course this is precisely the behavior that will result in the crisis deepening as the demand for goods and services (and thus for employed workers) goes over a cliff. And thus we have the need for the government to step in as the actor of last resort and do a little of that good old stimulating “deficit spending” when everyone else is hiding their money under the bed.
7. That money isn’t simply a convenient means of exchange for getting good and services but rather is a measure of our feelings about the world we live in; e.g., “our desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future. It operates…. at a deeper level of our motivation. It takes charge at the moments when the higher, more precarious conventions have weakened. The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the premium which we require to make us part with money is the measure of the degree of our disquietude.”
“Disquietude” being another way, as I reckon, to say “lending freeze” or “credit crunch” – no matter how much money we may throw at the Financial Services Industry.
Well, that’s just my take. If you’re interested, there is a wonderful short book about Keynes and his relevance to the modern economic crisis. It’s written by Robert Skidelsy, who also wrote a massive three volume biography of JMK for those who really want to take the “deep dive.” Anyway, the shorter book is called:
Keynes: The Return of the Master: Why, Sixty Years After His Death, John Maynard Keynes Is the Most important Economic Thinker for America
You can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Keynes-Return-Master-Robert-Skidelsky/dp/158648897X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293743276&sr=1-1
Meanwhile all best wishes for a wonderful 2011 to everyone out there still reading! Hopefully, we'll all pick up speed as we head into a lovely and bountiful 2011!
Anyway, as I was dreaming away, a friend who I hadn’t seen for a while came up and said two things:
1. “Good to see you again!"
2. "Hey, your blog posts are slowing down!”
In response I immediately had two reactions:
1. That sense of surprise I always have when I realize there actually are people out there who might be reading what I’m writing.
2. The realization that he was right. My blog posts are slowing down… which may, ahem, also mean I’m slowing down. Yikes!
So, being a good little analytical Virgo type, I started thinking about why this might be the case. Several theories immediately sprung to mind:
• “Bidness” has been better lately, and thus much more time consuming – for which I am profoundly grateful (as are my creditors!)
• We re-financed on our house (which was only slightly less irksome and all absorbing than asking Comrade Stalin for the required papers to leave Mother Russia at the height of the Great Purge.)
• Beatrice has been in France for the last three months helping her folks – so there’s just been more on my plate in terms of the day-to-day stuff involved in administering our… ahem… “estate”… (I was going to say “dacha” – not that we have one – but just because I kind of like the term…. Very Chekhovian.)
• Our koi pond sprung a leak! And if there’s ever a multi-dimensional challenge, involving digging ditches, employing inductive/deductive and reductive reasoning, as well as engaging in intense sessions of prayer and contemplation, it’s trying to troubleshoot and fix a leaky koi pond!
Before moving on though I’d just like to say how much help I received from our neighbor, Brice Hansen, on fixing the koi pond. He was so incredibly generous with his time and physical labor and troubleshooting smarts. What a guy!
After considerable brooding, I’m now leaning to the conclusion that the real reason for my “slow down” is that I’m simply feeling overwhelmed by things… • There’s also seems to be a “wintry feeling” in my heart which may have something to do with the season, a sense of waiting for Spring perhaps, and an overall malaise about the direction that life and the world is taking.
… which brings me back to my last blog post on John Maynard Keynes…
So perhaps I’ll wind up 2010 with a few last thoughts on why Keynes is such an attractive figure to me now. Largely I think it’s because he realized:
1. That the ultimate purpose of studying economics was to provide as many people as possible with what he called “the good life”; e.g., to live “wisely, agreeably, and well.”
2. How uncertain and crazy the future is and that “markets” are not driven by people who possess perfect information and behave rationally but who are often driven by terror and folly.
3. That a horrible gap exists when “self-correcting markets” are lurching towards some kind of pre-ordained “equilibrium” between supply, demand, and full employment and that during those gaps some rather unpleasant things such as… Well… err… fascism… can occur.
4. That everyone should have a basic understanding of economics just as they should know about all other areas of human discourse (religion, science, the arts, philosophy, morals, etc.)
5. That, as a result, economics should be written as clearly and simply as possible and not hide its insights beneath impenetrable “professional” jargon and a blizzard of mathematics.
6. That we are all victims of the “paradox of thrift”; e.g., we start to cut back on spending and want to hoard our gold in times of economic crisis. Of course this is precisely the behavior that will result in the crisis deepening as the demand for goods and services (and thus for employed workers) goes over a cliff. And thus we have the need for the government to step in as the actor of last resort and do a little of that good old stimulating “deficit spending” when everyone else is hiding their money under the bed.
7. That money isn’t simply a convenient means of exchange for getting good and services but rather is a measure of our feelings about the world we live in; e.g., “our desire to hold money as a store of wealth is a barometer of the degree of our distrust of our own calculations and conventions concerning the future. It operates…. at a deeper level of our motivation. It takes charge at the moments when the higher, more precarious conventions have weakened. The possession of actual money lulls our disquietude; and the premium which we require to make us part with money is the measure of the degree of our disquietude.”
“Disquietude” being another way, as I reckon, to say “lending freeze” or “credit crunch” – no matter how much money we may throw at the Financial Services Industry.
Well, that’s just my take. If you’re interested, there is a wonderful short book about Keynes and his relevance to the modern economic crisis. It’s written by Robert Skidelsy, who also wrote a massive three volume biography of JMK for those who really want to take the “deep dive.” Anyway, the shorter book is called:
Keynes: The Return of the Master: Why, Sixty Years After His Death, John Maynard Keynes Is the Most important Economic Thinker for America
You can find it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Keynes-Return-Master-Robert-Skidelsky/dp/158648897X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1293743276&sr=1-1
Meanwhile all best wishes for a wonderful 2011 to everyone out there still reading! Hopefully, we'll all pick up speed as we head into a lovely and bountiful 2011!
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